


love is cursed by monogamy

by keptein



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Threesome - F/M/M, Triad (Relationship)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 06:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2140917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keptein/pseuds/keptein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha has two soulmate marks. It's a problem until it isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is cursed by monogamy

**Author's Note:**

> i have yet to read soulmate mark aus with poly relationships, so i wrote one. (i've also wanted to problematicize soulmate marks _forever_.) this is also the poly ship of my heart, so. huge thanks to zeffy and shannon for looking this over and general encouragement! you guys are the best. title from kanye west's "no church in the wild". if you like this, i'm at tumblr under [the same name](http://keptein.tumblr.com).

Natasha was six years old when she noticed her mark for the first time. Now, over forty years later, she was in bed with the man who shared it, his once-again familiar body pressed along her side, his fingers warmed by the both of them spread to cover the small snowflake on her rib cage.

“I'm glad you're back,” he said. His hand tightened for a moment before he uncurled his fingers. “Really glad.”

“Me too,” Natasha said. Her eyes flickered to the half-covered window, dawn light slowly making its way through to illuminate their bed.

They didn't say anything else, just watched the light. There was nothing to say. Few were as familiar with memory modifications as Natasha Romanova and James Barnes, and what mattered was this moment. They were each other’s constants again, like they had been. Like they should be.

*

There were no fairy-tale endings in their line of work, but there were fairy-tale pit stops – quiet weeks, conflicts resolved without too much bloodshed.

“And Cap and Tony can stand each other,” Jessica Drew said, snorting, and Natasha sighed.

“That, too,” she said, clinking her iced mocha against Jessica's cappuccino.

“Hey,” Jessica started, worrying at her napkin. “You and Barnes are marked, right?”

Natasha nodded.

“I think Carol and I are, too,” Jessica said.

“You think?” Natasha raised her eyebrows.

“She doesn't want to confirm it. I don't know if I want to, either. It's kind of scary, isn't it, knowing that that person is The One?”

Natasha hummed. “It doesn't have to be romantic, you know.” Reminders that it didn't always work out wouldn't reassure Jessica, and Steve Rogers and Tony Stark could be a success story one week and a warning the next.

“So they say,” Jessica said. She sighed. “I guess it could be worse. I could be marked to _Clint_.”

“That would've been a sight,” Natasha agreed, laughing a little. She looked at the clock. “Actually, speaking of – I have to go pay him a visit,” she said, draining the last of her drink as she stood up. “Do you want to come?”

“No thanks,” Jessica said, still smiling a little. “I'll go see what Carol is up to. No, no -” she said when Natasha dug around for her card, “you get the next one, I'll pay this time.”

“Thanks,” Natasha said.

*

Clint's teenage sidekick opened the door when she knocked. “Clint,” Kate shouted over her shoulder. “It's your spy ex.”

“Which one?” Clint said, his head popping out from the bathroom. “Oh, hey, Natasha.”

“Hey,” Natasha said, folding up her sunglasses.

“There's coffee in the pot,” Kate told her. “I'm watching _Grey's Anatomy_.”

“That's still going?” Natasha asked, and Kate huffed.

Clint stepped into the room, hair still wet and towel around his hips. “Kate, did you walk the dog?”

She looked at him from the couch. “It's your dog,” she said.

“Oh, _now_ it's my dog,” Clint grumbled. “Well, it can wait.” He dumped down on the couch next to Kate, who made a face, and put his feet up on the sad-looking coffee table. “What are you here for, Nat?”

“I,” Natasha said. She couldn't look away from Clint's foot. Maybe it was just what Jessica had said, that had made her think of Clint's mark and what it might be, who might share it. Maybe that line following the arch of his foot was just a scar healed oddly.

“Natasha?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I wondered if you had my guns still.”

“Oh, yeah, they're here somewhere,” Clint said, standing up. He bent down to rummage around under the coffee table. Kate hit him with a pillow.

“Go put on some clothes!”

“Just a sec,” Clint told Natasha, then headed for his room. Natasha looked at Kate, then at the TV.

“ _We're engaged_ ,” one of the doctors was saying. “ _We're_ marked, _I can't just leave him_ -”

“ _But so are we,_ ” another doctor said boldly, and tore off his scrubs to show a blooming flower on his chest.

“This is not the show I remember,” Natasha said, and looked away.

*

It didn't matter, she told herself on the way home, hands deep in the pockets of her trench coat. She was probably mistaken, and in any case, it didn't matter.

*

She wasn't mistaken.

Sitting cross-legged in front of her mirror, Natasha looked at the sole of her foot, rubbing forcefully at the line there. It stayed.

She sighed and laid back, staring at the ceiling.

“Nothing's changed,” she told it. She knew what it was like to be commandeered by outside forces, and a mark on Clint Barton's body wasn't allowed to wield that sort of power over her.

*

“What are you doing?” James laughed, yanking his feet out of her grip. He was naked, lying on his bed with Natasha crouched over him, her hair falling over her face before he pushed it behind her ear.

“Why, are you ticklish?” She ran her hands up his legs, carefully looking at every scar, mole and discoloring she could find.

“Come here,” he said, and pulled her into a kiss, his hands around her face and her hands on his chest, until she was straddling him.

The rest could wait, Natasha thought, and closed her eyes as she leaned into the kiss.

*

Still, after weeks of vigorously checking every part of James's body, Natasha had to admit that there was nothing there. Nothing that could conceivably match any mark of Clint's.

It didn't matter. She was lucky enough with James, and, like she'd told Jessica – it didn't have to be romantic. It didn't have to be anything at all.

Sometimes marked couples weren't couples at all, and that was just the way it went.

She'd disregard the entire idea in a heartbeat if it didn't appeal a little, James and Clint both at her side – Clint was a lot more grounded now than he'd been when they were young, and it could be something, this time around.

Ah, well. It didn't matter.

*

The rest of the year passed slowly. “Do you want to get out of here,” James asked her in the middle of December.

“Yeah,” Natasha said, and they went to Bali. Two weeks of sand and sun, and they were out of their element but smiling with it – Natasha drank margaritas and wore see-through sarongs, and James did increasingly acrobatic dives into the water to the awe of onlookers. Neither of them were wanted here, and the freedom was alluring and terrifyingly mundane at the same time. As one, their snowflake mark darkened in the sunlight.

One night, they drank until neither one remembered why they shouldn't, and while James was trying to do a one-handed handstand to prove that he wasn't drunk, his phone rang.

Natasha picked up, still giggling.

“We need you to come back,” Steve Rogers said.

James collapsed on the floor. “Finally,” he moaned. Natasha laughed.

*

“I'm building the Young Avengers a clubhouse,” Clint said, sitting down next to her on the bench. The late January air had reddened his cheeks, and he looked healthy and clear-eyed in the crisp afternoon.

“Do they still call themselves that?” Natasha asked, looking at the snowflakes twinkling on the trees.

“I think so,” Clint said. “Awful name.”

She looked at him. “Does Kate want a clubhouse?”

Clint made a clicking noise in his throat. “I don't know, but my apartment's not far from it right now. That Miss America keeps hanging around, so I think it's only a matter of time.”

“Clint Barton's Home for Wayward Powered Adolescents. The next Professor X,” Natasha said, and smirked at his face.

“ _Anyway_ ,” he said, “There'll be an opening. Bring your – bring Barnes, if you want.”

“Okay,” Natasha said. She put her hand on Clint's shoulder. “Hey. This is good, alright? It's good.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint said, but didn't shrug her hand off.

*

Natasha applied her lipstick while James looked on, openly appreciative. “You look amazing,” he said, coming up to nose at the nape of her neck while his hands settled lightly on her hips.

“Thanks,” she said, tilting her head back and regarding their reflection in the mirror, the picture they made. “So do you.”

She wasn't lying – James was wearing a tailored black suit with a painfully white shirt underneath, underlining the glow of his skin. When she was younger, just the sight of him like that could make her weak in the knees - an innocent weakness she'd never forced herself to confront, and sometimes it still did.

His hand pressed at her side, where the snowflake hid underneath deep red fabric. She smiled at him.

“We should go,” Natasha said, “we don't want to be late.”

“God forbid,” James muttered. Natasha raised an eyebrow, and he said, “Kidding, kidding. Barton's grown up quite a bit, huh? Building homes and everything.”

“We all have,” she said, fighting a shiver at his words.

The house Clint had paid for was much less ostentatious than the old Avengers mansion, and better off for it, although Natasha thought this house could see just as much greatness. A smiling Kate Bishop, dressed in artfully draped purple silk and her hands linked with America Chavez's, met them at the door. “Welcome!” she said.

“Glad you could make it,” Chavez said, glaring a little. She looked uncomfortable in a simple black dress, although her hand clutched Kate's just as tightly.

“Thank you,” Natasha said and stepped inside.

“There's Steve,” James said, “I'm gonna -”

She nodded, but he was already gone. Natasha took a moment to look around – the hallway led directly into the main living space, the high ceiling make the space look bigger, although it was now filled with enough people to make it feel cramped still. Natasha could see several Avengers, Young or otherwise, and the majority of the crowd had to be powered, although she could also see a couple of people who had to be the Young Avengers' parents. She spotted Jessica and made her way over, accepting a flute of champagne on the way.

“Classy joint,” Jessica told her when she approached, laughing. “I can't believe _Clint_ built this – or paid for it, I guess. Where did he get the money?”

“Who knows, with him,” Natasha said. “Is Carol here too?”

“Yeah,” Jessica said, nodding in the direction James had disappeared. It took months, but she'd stopped talking about marks and matches, statistics and rumors. She and Carol seemed to finally have reached an agreement with themselves and each other, and Natasha was grateful.

They walked pleasantly about nothing in the way old friends do, until Natasha saw Clint across the room. He was wearing a suit she was pretty sure was older than a lot of the guests present, definitely older than this house's new inhabitants – he didn't pull it off, but he looked charming all the same, quietly confident as he moved around the room.

“Oh, man,” Jessica said, “that is one ugly suit.”

“You're starting to sound like Spider-Man,” Natasha informed her - “Yeah, he's around here too,” Jessica said – and went to greet Clint.

“This is nice,” she told him.

“Yeah – have you seen Kate?” Clint reared his head as if to see better, but he was still taller than most of the guests, even though Natasha had worn a new pair of heels.

“Still in the hallway,” she said.

Clint breathed out. “Good.”

“Why, are you afraid of what she'll do to you when she sees you in that suit?”

He gave her a dirty look. “I'm pretty sure this suit is in vague – volk – oh, whatever,” he said. “She's been hounding me about my mark for days now, I'm worried she's gonna ambush me.”

“Not here, surely,” Natasha said, gesturing to all the potential witnesses. “Besides, would you let a teenager get the jump on you?”

“She's _amazing_ ,” Clint said, looking very put-out about it. “You never know. And, you know, Jess had hers confirmed now, so there's new – buzz.”

“She and Carol seem happy,” Natasha said, drinking from her glass.

“Yeah, well. Guess I'll have to drink my sorrows away.”

“Don't worry,” Natasha said, looking intently at James's back, “you'll find your shared.”

“Oh, I don't have a mark,” Clint said.

Natasha paused in her sip, slowly moving her gaze to meet Clint's. “No?”

He shrugged.

She swallowed. There was a method Natasha had taught herself when she was a little girl: identify your emotions, then disregard them. They didn't matter.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

“Stick around, there's gonna be cake,” Clint said.

*

Natasha did end up sticking around, until she had to carry her shoes around in her hand because her feet were killing her. James had left with Steve, and there were mostly stragglers hanging around. The Young Avengers were heading upstairs for their afterparty, but Kate was still finding her to ask her opinion about aspects of the house, whether rooms themed by color scheme was a good idea or not - “but what if I change my scheme,” one of the other Young Avengers said, perturbed, and Kate replied, “then you _don't_ ,” - and whether curtains or blinds were best.

“Shades are easiest to glimpse through,” Natasha said. Which was both an asset and an annoyance, in her opinion.

A few of the rooms weren't done, still bare-bones shells with rough floors and unpainted walls, and Kate led her into one of them, saying, “Okay, imagine -”

“Hold up,” Natasha said, stopping and holding the arm with her shoes out. “I just got a splinter – could you go find me a pair of tweezers? I'll be in the bathroom.”

“Sure,” Kate said and disappeared. Natasha bent over to study the underside of her foot – the pain was negligible, an afterthought, but it had torn her pantyhose. Thirty dollars down the drain, she thought sadly.

In the bathroom, she adjusted the lighting slightly before Clint entered, looking he'd grabbed the excuse to get away with both hands. “Here,” he said, holding out a pair of tweezers, and Natasha took them gratefully.

She'd like to blame what she did next on the champagne or the lateness of the hour, or some lingering sympathy for a man who thought he was unmatchable, in the worst way. Still, to imagine her so unaware of her own actions was painful, and painfully unrealistic – so maybe it was a subconscious need for him to know, or maybe she just forgot, for a second, who he was. Who they both were.

Natasha sat down on top of the toilet lid and put her foot up, angling it to to best see where the splinter had dug itself under her skin.

“Hey,” Clint said faintly. “That line there, how did you get that?”

Natasha pulled the splinter out. “I don't know,” she said quietly. She wanted to look up, forced herself to meet his eyes. She couldn't lie, not about this – wouldn't, because she owed him that much, at least.

“Because it looks really familiar,” Clint said, voice growing stronger. “ _Really_ familiar. In fact, I think I have a mark just like it -”

“I have to go,” Natasha said. “Tell Kate to ask someone else about the light fixtures, I don't know anything about interior design.”

She left. Identify, disregard. It didn't matter.

She hoped James would be there when she got home.

*

The next morning, Clint knocked four times before he let himself into her apartment. “You know I don't like it when you barge into my space,” Natasha said. He looked rumpled and smelled faintly of last night’s champagne, although he was wearing something other than that horrendous suit.

“Oh, sorry, I just really had to – wait, no, you don't get to do that,” Clint said. “Don't make me the one in the wrong here, I came to talk about last night.”

“I figured,” Natasha said. “Coffee?”

“Is Bucky here?” Clint asked, following her into the kitchen.

“If he was, I wouldn't have let you in,” Natasha said. She opened a cupboard for mugs and put the coffee on, her back to Clint.

“Good,” he said. “You should leave him and we can get back together.”

“What?” Natasha turned around, her mouth falling open. “No.”

“Nat, we're _marked_ ,” Clint said, as if she didn't know. “Do you know – do you know how long I've waited for this? Do you know what I'd have given to find you? I know we didn't make it work last time, but we didn't really _try_ , and I think we could -”

“Clint,” Natasha interrupted. Her fingers clenched around the coffee cup. “I'm with James.”

“But you don't have to be,” he said. “Natasha, you're my _shared_.” He sounded almost reverent.

This was the problem with marks, Natasha thought. People put all this significance into them, made them mean so much, when really they were just empty symbols. They weren't – it didn't _matter_.

“It doesn't have to be romantic,” she said. The words sounded hollow in her head.

“It can't be anything else,” Clint said. “Wait – fuck -”

“This is a _complication_ ,” she hissed, heart in her throat. “I'm happy, you're happy -”

“We could be happier,” Clint said desperately. “Natasha, please -”

“What about James?” she said. “Do you want him to go without his shared, like you have?”

“What do you mean,” he said.

She shot him a dirty look and lifted the hem of her t-shirt, baring the snowflake on her ribs.

“I just thought that was a tattoo,” Clint said. Natasha snorted derisively. “I mean, you can't have two marks ...”

She let her t-shirt fall back into place. His eyes widened.

“You have two marks,” he said.

Natasha didn't reply.

“Does Bucky know?”

“No,” she said.

“Then we could – maybe we could -”

“What, draw up a timeshare arrangement?” she said bitterly.

“ _No_ , what the fuck, Nat, you're a person, not a toy -”

She stared at him. “Get out,” she said once she could speak.

“What – okay, but this conversation isn't over,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” she said, and closed the door in his face.

*

After that, Natasha left for a few days to help out some Avengers on the West Coast, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Clint could be trouble. She was unsure if he would tell James, and she was mad at herself for it - if she hadn’t been so subjective, blinded by her own emotions, she would have known Clint’s every move before he made them. He was, after all, supposed to be predictable, and she’d come to rely on that - which was lazy and amateurish, and Natasha used the flight back to New York to berate herself.

Once the plane touched ground, Natasha was determined once more. She would have to tell James, because she needed the situation back in her own hands. Spies and spin doctors, she thought, too similar for comfort.

And so she went home and called James, and when he arrived, she took of her shoe and her sock. “Look at this,” she said. No gimmicks, no angle - the easiest way to get him on her side.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a mark,” she said. “I share it with Clint Barton.”

James sat down and took her foot into his lap, and she sat down on a chair opposite him. He traced the line with his thumb, tentatively at first then more firmly, as if to see whether he could rub it out with force, whether the mark would disappear once pressured.

The mark stayed.

“Have you known for a long time?” he asked.

“No,” she said, because she hadn’t, relatively.

James disliked marks. Natasha was indifferent, recognizing the potential they symbolized without analyzing further, but James disliked the predestined nature of them, the statistics that said it was more probable for a person to meet their shared than not.

“How can they say that,” James had asked her one night, “when the chances of us meeting, of me finding you, was so small?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha had said with a smirk, “we do hang in a lot of the same circles,” and her smirk turned into a genuine smile at his sour expression.

Now, James was quiet.

Sometimes, he’d wondered absently about whether they were as good for each other as two people could be - his thoughts never injured her, because there was a quiet agreement between them, a promise that they’d fight for each other until they couldn’t, and then fight a little longer.

She remembered his musings now. James hated marks because he made them powerful and believed their prediction absolute, and maybe some part of that stemmed from fear. Maybe this was a new James in front of her, one afraid that she would break the pattern of choosing him every time she could, now that some oddity of nature had presented her with another choice.

“What do you want to do?” he said finally. He was unnaturally relaxed, a conscious effort to hide his body language.

Cut from the same cloth, Natasha thought. “It doesn’t have to change anything.”

“Yeah, it does,” he said. “You want it to, don’t you?”

She conceded the point, tilting her head slightly. Her foot was still in his lap. “A daydream. We’re allowed those now, you know.”

He huffed. “Sure. You don’t wanna deal with it, we won’t deal with it.”

Natasha paused, and withdrew her leg from his warmth. Her responses ranged from the painfully insincere to the uncomfortably honest, and in the end, she just nodded. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” James said. “I’d really rather not take part in your blatant repression of shit.”

The words stung. It wasn’t like he was any better. “Then why do you,” she said.

“Because an argument with you is one I won’t win,” he said simply. “And I know I can’t force you to have a conversation you don’t want to have.”

She swallowed, trying to wet her throat. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Really?” he said, and metal glinted in the air as he gestured, standing up to pace. “What about Clint? Have you actually spoken to him about this? Does he have two marks too, or are you his only marked?”

“Why,” Natasha spat, “do you care? Wanna _share_ me?”

“это пиздец, Natasha, you’re not mine to share!” James took a deep breath, then looked back at her. “You’re your own and I’m my own, and that’s the whole _point_. But Clint is his own too.”

“You were right,” Natasha said, “we’re not having this conversation.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again as he turned away. He was quiet for a long time until he finally said, “Okay. Okay.” He sounded tired. “Just stop projecting your issues onto me. And talk to Clint.”

Natasha touched him, once, before she left. This thing between them felt stripped to the bones, more vulnerable than it had been in a long time, and the touch was a reminder that what they had was solid.

James didn’t turn away, but he didn’t touch her in return either.

*

She didn’t see James again for a couple of weeks after that, and when she did, he allowed the pretense that there was nothing to talk about. She didn’t talk to Clint. The luxury of a life like hers was the promise of a fight, an endless distraction at her disposal if she wanted it - and she indulged it, more than she had in a long time.

Sometimes Clint called her. She didn’t pick up, until one night her phone beeped with a text from Kate - _“talk 2 him or i WILL kill him he is IMPOSSIBLE”_ \- and Natasha forced herself to acknowledge that she might have to do something.

She let herself into his apartment, content to wait until he woke, but Clint was still stumbling around. He looked unsurprised to see her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said.

There was silence.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” he asked finally.

“It’s four in the morning.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Clint said, and put the coffee pot on the stove.

Natasha watched him with a bemused smile. “This won’t go anywhere, you know.”

“This won’t go anywhere because you won’t let it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You think it’s that easy?”

Clint shrugged, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter. “I don’t think it’s much harder, no.”

“What about James?”

“I’m down if he’s down,” Clint said. “You know I don’t - I don’t care. About that stuff.”

“Yeah,” Natasha said, eyeing him. “Have you talked to him?”

Clint shrugged again. “Maybe.” He turned and poured two cups of coffee, handing her one of them. She accepted it, looking into the dark liquid.

She had to say it, give him _something_ , he was owed that. But she didn’t have to show him how deep it went - identify and disregard. It was much easier to talk about her feelings when she didn’t feel them. “I don’t want it to be something we do just because of me,” Natasha said. She looked up from the cup she cradled in her hands.

Clint simply stood there, solid and strong, taking a long drink from his coffee before he replied. “Decisions are never based on one reason,” he said. “You know that, that’s why people are tricky - because there’s never point A and point B when it comes to reasoning and decision-making, there’s always at least point C through F to consider too. I want this because of you, I want to try it because of you, and because of Bucky, and probably because of something Barney said to me when I was six, or something. I want to try it because I’m me, and I want to try it because I’ll have something to be proud of. It’s been a while since I’ve been part of something I knew could be good.”

Natasha drank as she processed his words. “You didn’t mention the marks,” she said.

“Because the marks are like - they’re an excuse, you know? They’re important because they justify it, but they’re not a reason by themselves. So it’s because of them, but it’s not _because of them_ , you know?”

She raised an eyebrow. “What happened to _oh, what I’d give to find my shared_?”

“Kate lectured me for a while,” Clint said. “Said I shouldn’t put so much importance on it. I think she and America have been talking about it a lot, she made some really good points.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I mean, some of it was - okay?”

“Okay,” she confirmed, and couldn’t help smiling at the look on his face. Something about him, the quietness of his apartment and the warmth of the cup in her hand, made her trepidation take a step back and let her enjoy the excitement growing in her chest. Her disbelief could stay suspended for another day. “We have to talk to James, though.”

*

“I _knew_ it,” James crowed. Natasha sighed. Clint just looked happy. “I _called_ it, didn’t I call it?”

“You called it,” Natasha said grudgingly. He was smiling, though, a truer smile than she’d seen in a long time as he winked at Clint - who seemed taken aback, although he returned the smile with force. She wanted to tell them to stop - not to give this more weight than it had to have, before it became too heavy and shattered into pieces. James was enthusiastic now, seduced by the idea of _choice_ , of choosing Clint like he never could choose Natasha, but a support beam like that could never hold up anything important.

She wouldn’t tell them, though. Not today.

*

It went in fits and starts, like all relationships do. They were tentative with each other at first, Natasha and James consciously and somewhat awkwardly having to make space for Clint beside them, between them, but after a while it became habit, as natural as they themselves were, and it _worked_. Natasha took the longest to admit it, but - it worked. It was working.

It was something good, good like few things were.

They were all in James’s bed, using the excuse of snow falling heavily outside to stay there just a little longer. Clint was leaning back against James, back-to-chest, while Natasha was curled beside them, absently paging through a book while she listened to them talk. James was tracing the moles and freckles on Clint’s arm as they spoke about easy, familiar things, light affection coloring their words.

“Wait,” James said. “Have you always had these?” His thumb was rubbing at a constellation of freckles on Clint’s left arm.

“Yeah,” Clint said. “They kinda look like a zodiac or something. Kinda cool, right?”

James was quiet. “Like Ursa minor,” he said. Natasha tensed.

“Right,” said Clint. “What’s going on?”

James shook his head, said, “Nothing.” He pressed a kiss to the back of Clint’s neck.

“James,” Natasha said. She wanted to sound gentle, but it came out stern, like a warning.

“It’s just really familiar,” he said. “I think … I think I had it, too.”

“Wait, _what_?” Clint said, sitting up properly to look James in the eye. “Are you serious?”

James used his fingers of his right hand to dot the constellation on his left arm, identical to Clint’s. “Yeah.”

Natasha closed the cover of her book and sat up. Clint and James looked at each other, both stricken.

“I thought I chose you myself,” James said finally. “I thought you were the proof I could still find things that weren’t meant for me and make them mine.”

“James,” Natasha said, because she had to say _something_ , had to save him from himself, but she couldn’t find the words. “Everything’s predestined once it’s happened,” she said finally.

“That’s bullshit,” he said, angry, “it was my _choice_!”

Clint looked like he wanted to run away. Natasha wanted to run away too, wanted to delay this moment forever, terrified of what might happen after. Then he visibly steeled himself, clenching his jaw. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Are you ditching me now?”

“I,” said James. In fits and starts, like all things. Then, finally, “no. You know I’m not.”

It was like the bed itself sank with relief, and Natasha unclenched the fists her hands had turned into.

“Good,” Clint said. He still looked vulnerable, and Natasha took his hand in hers, gripping tightly. “That’s good.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” James said, and his hand came up to Clint’s cheek as he hid his face in his neck. “I’m sorry.”

Clint stroked his back, still holding Natasha’s hand.

Later, Clint was asleep beside them, and Natasha and James lay side by side - his hand kept returning to her mark, but she couldn’t tell if it was a reminder or a reassurance. “What if I only love him because I have to,” James whispered, so quietly they could almost pretend he hadn’t said it. His eyes were unreadable in the dark.

“Do you love me because you have to?” Natasha asked, just as quietly. Her hand took his, moving it away from her mark and into the space between them instead.

“No,” James said instinctively, then: “Yes. I have to love you.”

“Good,” she said, smiling. Faint light made her teeth glint in the dark. “That’s what love is.”

  
  



End file.
